I understand why Robin Williams movies suck. Sure, he’s done good (or at least interesting) work in everything from Moscow On The Hudson and The Best of Times to The Fisher King and even creepy, icky One Hour Photo (part of the “dark Robin” trilogy along with Insomnia and Death To Smoochy). For the most part, though, Williams is primarily known for some combination of annoying, "look at me!  look at me!" over-the-top wacky (Mrs. Doubtfire, Toys, every single talk show appearance ever) and/or shameless, cloying, dewy-eyed schmaltz (Jack, Patch Adams, Fathers' Day...oh God, I’m choking on my own vomit)...

But I get that. Williams is a needy, hyperactive mental case. Sure, he’s talented and seems like a sweet, well-meaning guy, too...but I’m also guessing he’s been to a LOT of Narcotics Anonymous meetings full of weepy, life-affirming speeches and “I love you, man” hugs. On some level, I’m willing to believe Williams actually enjoyed his own performance in License To Wed.

But Steve Martin knows better...doesn’t he?

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Two of the major film comedians of recent decades have started launching multiple assaults onto bookstore shelves. Woody Allen, of course, stop being a "mere" comedian a long time ago; he also started hemorrhaging audience shares a long time ago, and Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Movie-making, a redundantly subtitled collection of interviews conducted with his biographer Eric Lax, is designed to serve as a reminder that he is a major filmmaker, in case any of the people who've stopped seeing his movies have forgotten it. Much of what he has to say about the path he's taken as a director and his on-again, off-again relationship with his fans will be very familiar to anyone who's had moments of being interested lo these many years. Allen likes to affect a mandarin pose; the official story is that he stopped reading his reviews after Annie Hall, a film whose "classic" status apparently strikes him as inexplicable. But the 1980 Stardust Memories, a self-victimization orgy (and a work that Allen regards as among his very favorites) that includes a fantasy scene of extraterrestrials telling Allen that they prefer his "earlier, funnier" films, sure does look like it was made by someone who'd made a close study of the reviews of Interiors. Lax may be too deferential for the job; the book would be a livelier read if some of it had been done with an interlocutor who might have reacted to Allen's wondering aloud why Hollywood Ending "was not thought of as a first-rate, extraordinary comedy" by explaining, "Because it sucked donkeys, my liege."

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